Theatre

Last night: went to see Yesteryear by Joanna McClelland Glass at the Ottawa Little Theatre. I particularly enjoyed the performances of Sheila Shields and Michael Kennedy; thought the female romantic lead was sort of stiff and unconvincing.

Tonight: went to the National Arts Centre to see the musical Pelagie, based on the novel by Antonine Maillet, about the expulsion of the Acadians. A friend had described it to me as "a cross between Les Miserables and Mother Courage and Her Children, which is fair enough, except that the music isn't up to Les Mis standards. It is, however, suitably historical and depressing. Why did Pelagie and the Acadians think they could return to Acadia and not be deported again?

It did make me think about historical atrocities. I've always thought the expulsion of the Acadians was a terrible thing; I once wrote an essay about the man responsible for it, Governor Charles Lawrence, who said, "By deporting the Acadians and killing the Indians we have made Nova Scotia safe for people to live in." The hideous irony of that fascinates me.

But atrocity though it was, it seems to me that in the 18th century rulers dealt with unwanted populations by shipping them away, like the Acadians. In the twentieth century, genocide is the rule. Such is the march of progress. I guess there's nowhere to deport large populations to any more.